Can good performances save a bad production? Both casts, daytime and evening, of American Ballet Theatre’s problematic version of “The Sleeping Beauty” were certainly doing everything they could to make the damn thing work.

The big news – and it was big news – was the only guest appearance of Royal Ballet ballerina Alina Cojocaru. Her Aurora was marked by unforced brilliance and ease, but she didn’t make the part look easy – she made it look natural. Her vision scene hit exactly the right note between sweetness and pathos and her reading of the famous Act III variation was musically sensitive and immaculately rendered. It was one of the most refined performances I’ve seen.

Rather than nerve wracking, the Rose Adagio was calm; she suspended each balance, and skipped the fourth prince in the first set of balances. Ironically, her foot gave out slightly after she had made them all, when she was coming down from the final pose.

Despite the foregone prince, Cojocaru isn’t a showy dancer. She did one perfect multiple pirouette, the rest were impeccable doubles. The texture of her dancing is creamy, but she keeps things from monotone by adding physical punctuation: flourishing the roses in the Rose Adagio at the end of a supported pirouette, or marking her turns with a sudden stop in the grand pas de deux in Act III.

Cojocaru looked faultless in the main sections but slotting her into the rest of the production showed that she was an imported guest artist with limited rehearsal time. There were spacing issues and other little glitches; Abrera accidentally walked into Cojocaru as she took an arabesque in the vision scene. At the very end, Cojocaru did the steps at a slower tempo than the rest of the cast and either she or her prince, Jose Manuel Carreño, forgot what to do before the final poses. One talked the other through it.

Carreño repeated his role from opening night, but seemed sluggish next to Cojocaru. There was one great blooper when he lost his false ponytail during his variation in Act III and poor Cinderella (Leann Underwood) had to walk to the middle of the stage and pick it up during the applause.

Joseph Phillips didn’t have the stamina for the Bluebird opposite Maria Riccetto, who was an attractive but soft Florine. But all the cast worked to live up to its esteemed guest. The fairies gave consistently good performances. If Stella Abrera’s Lilac Fairy seemed a bit frozen emotionally at the outset, she took the conflict seriously and rebuffed Carabosse sternly: Aurora will not die. The material for Martine van Hamel’s Carabosse is cartoonish, but she invested her with offended dignity.

Wes Chapman performed a rounded Catalabutte: a punctilious but human bureaucrat. Victor Barbee adds details to every supporting role; here he quietly forgave Catalabutte after the fiasco at Aurora’s christening. Karen Uphoff took role of the Queen seriously; gently pleading with Barbee for clemency in the spindle scene. Even Arron Scott added life to Catalabutte’s lackey.

The production is still changing details. In the afternoon Carabosse tried to stab the prince with a spindle-like stiletto rather than a sword. In the evening it was a sword again. The blindfold that was black on opening night and white at this matinee was black once again in the evening.

Since its inauspicious opening, ABT quickly recognized that the production was seriously flawed, and began paring out the productions “improvements.” What they’ve reverted to is a relatively standard production in outline, but they would have been better off with that to start. The dancers are working on details in all the roles and really trying to make it work – but it’s an uphill climb.

Natalia Osipova’s Aurora was as anticipated as Cojocaru’s, but Cojocaru’s buzz was for a role she has become justifiably renowned and Osipova’s had the excitement of novelty. This was Osipova’s first shot at the part anywhere, and she was getting coaching from Irina Kolpakova.

Osipova’s debut showed prodigious talent. All the technical ingredients were there: a role that is a ballerina’s test gave her no real trouble. What wasn’t yet there was a comfortable fit for her sensibility. Through the ballet you sensed Osipova trying to figure out where to set the dial: should she peg it or pull back? The answer seemed to be both; she needs to do the role a few times more to figure out where.

She seemed most reined in during Act I, where she would force herself to be correct, with every angle studied, and then she would blast skywards into a jump she couldn’t resist. In the Rose Adagio during the opening developpés with her quartet of suitors she held each balance – because she could.

She did her first set of balances in attitude the Russian way, without raising her arm en haut. At times her coquetry seemed studied, but the arabesque penchées down the line of princes was lovely – a whispered conversation with each. As the dance went on she found ways to make the choreography come from inside rather than look pasted on. She soared in the final rond de jambes sautés she did before Carabosse reentered with the fatal spindle.

Osipova has opted for David Hallberg as her go-to partner in the company and couldn’t have made a better choice for a debut. He knows the role and they have wonderful rapport, though he occasionally fell into his tic of making goo-goo eyes onstage when he’s trying too hard to act. He has such elegant lines that when he and his four friends do an egregious pre-entry that’s tacked on before the hunt scene to pad the male roles, it’s at least beautiful as abstract dance.

Other roles were also well cast. Roman Zhurbin and Susan Jaffe were a fine royal couple; Daniil Simkin and Sarah Lane nailed the Bluebird pas de deux. The Lilac Fairy may be Michele Wiles’ best role. She approaches the role traditionally and her placidity is a perfect match for the part. She’s a benign force of good who knows she’s in charge and that Carabosse (a glamorous Maria Bystrova) is no match for her. Her calmness was a foil to Osipova’s energy, and physically she balances her as well.

By the wedding pas de deux in the final act, Osipova was becoming herself in the role, with infectious joy and a huge grin. Though there are significant differences, she and Ashley Bouder are cousins under the skin (and Osipova came to New York City Ballet to watch Bouder perform “Donizetti Variations” – I don’t know if the reverse happened.) They’re both technicians with immense, aggressive personalities onstage and they win us over with the honesty of their desire to excel. Right now, Osipova has better coaching in the standard ballerina repertory – I’ve never seen her dance Balanchine, but who wouldn’t want to see her in the third movement of “Symphony in C?” Two young ambitious ballerinas, and it’s no surprise that both of them approach repertory like Sherman approached Atlanta – as a conquering force.

Osipova’s debuts were among the most anticipated events of the dance season. If she needed to find herself within Aurora, she seemed to already know exactly what she wanted out of Juliet.

Again, Osipova got coaching, this time from Alessandra Ferri. But the details in the role were her own. Ferri’s Juliet was passionate, but also boneless with long, arcing lines. Osipova’s Juliet is a tomboy; her first entrance was filled with irrepressible energy as well as detail. When her parents enter unexpectedly to introduce her to Paris, she’s aware enough of the implications to hide the doll she and the nurse have been playing with behind her back and furiously shake it, indicating to the nurse to get it now.

She played her entry to the ball as her debut in society. Everything felt new to her, the dress, the crowd, even the room, and she was tickled by it. She shaded her first dance with Paris (Sascha Radetsky) so that things started smoothly, but she began to have doubts even before she ever saw Romeo – this man may not be the one. Catching sight of Romeo is confirmation.

Hallberg’s Romeo was a jokester, filled with enjoyment at the outset. He flirted with Rosaline as much for the thrill of forbidden fruit as out of love. Again, Hallberg and Osipova had the true chemistry of a partnership. She inspires his best, most sensitive acting. As he reads Juliet’s letter in Act II, he showed his mounting excitement by doing less and less, not more.

Still, Osipova has to modulate the first act; she danced the first short interlude alone with Romeo at the Capulet ball in full-on ecstasy as if it were already the Balcony Scene – too much intimacy too fast.

Jared Matthews’ Mercutio was the weak link in the production, and in some ways he’s been the weak link much of the season. He’s good enough to dance Mercutio or Espada, but not against powerhouse casting. He’s neither dancing nor acting at the same level and he’s got his work cut out for him to keep up. Blaine Hoven was keeping up as Benvolio. He’s a talented dancer (though with an unclassical habit of rolling his head out of soutenus), and a good stage fighter. With his lush lines, if he can partner at the same level he’s a possibility to take pressure off the desperately overworked Marcelo Gomes.

Hallberg, Matthews and Hoven have a Three Amigos friendship in the Queen Mab trio. But the choice made to make Mercutio’s death almost happenstance (Romeo pushed Mercutio and he accidentally backed into Tybalt’s sword) didn’t work. Almost every cast does this differently, and the actuality of Shakespeare’s play, where Romeo attempts to stop the fighting and Tybalt stabs Mercutio from under Romeo’s arm, is barely a reference. Tybalt has to have some agency in Mercutio’s death or the drama becomes too weak. Still, Patrick Ogle did well as Tybalt; he plays Mercutio’s death as a brief detour to his goal of killing Romeo.

Both Osipova and Hallberg took Act III full throttle; the bedroom pas de deux was filled with the joy of love mixed with the agony of violence and banishment. The Capulet clan was all well acted. Kristi Boone was a good, pained Lady Capulet. Radetsky and Barbee repeated their roles as Paris and Lord Capulet from earlier in the run, and did them slightly differently; each had a fresh reaction to the situation as it unfolded.

Osipova gained new resolve in a harrowing family scene. More than other Juliets, she made her rejection of the nurse clear, rebuffing and refusing to talk to her not from anger, but betrayal. She danced with Paris as if she were dead already. The poison scene was a religious moment; she prayed for strength and gulped down the phial.

Hallberg appeared at her tomb wild-eyed with grief. He died after a gentle moment rearranging Juliet on her bier, to look, ironically, as if she were only asleep. Osipova was so distraught on discovering him that it almost dawned on her too late she was running out of music to get the knife and stab herself. She did it a breath late.

Osipova’s interpretation, strong and honest, lets her be herself in the role. There’s unquestionably an Aurora in Osipova as well; it just wasn’t as obvious at first glance.